1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a display method that displays a schedule screen showing an execution reservation state of JOB on a display section of an image forming apparatus, a display device and an image forming apparatus.
2. Background
With respect to sizes of various buttons which are displayed on a display section that is provided on an image forming apparatus and represent an object of operation by a user, they are usually determined by taking operations on a touch panel and operations on a mouse into account. On the display screen that displays an execution reservation state for plural JOBs, for example, on the JOB list screen, information concerning plural JOBs, is displayed on the screen in accordance of the aforesaid schedule.
However, for the object whose size and position cannot be determined only one-sidedly, it is impossible to take the configuration mentioned above. For example, in the case of the screen structure showing reserved JOB at a size corresponding to its time scale, JOB itself sometimes disappears from the screen if the scale on the horizontal axis is switched to a larger unit.
Therefore, when plural screens need to be displayed on a display section, there has been suggested a mode wherein plural screens are drawn to be superimposed, and an operation system to turn over a window for displaying contents existing on the lower layer of the displayed contents which have been drawn to be superimposed, is provided, so that information may be displayed through user operations (see Unexamined Japanese Patent Application Publication No. 6-242916).
However, when JOBs each requiring writing to be superimposed are in existence continuously, there occurs unfortunately a state wherein plural JOBs exist in a size shown by one dot representing a minimum unit on a screen, and in particular, JOB that is different from ordinary state exists to obstruct a user to know the existence of the information on its screen, even when information to be recognized by the user such as warning exists. Therefore, even in the case where information for warning exists in a lower layer, it is difficult to arrive at a moment to display the aforesaid information by the aforesaid operation of turning over the window. In this case, a user can view each JOB, and it is necessary for the user to switch the scale to the selectable size.
The present invention has been achieved in view of the aforesaid problems, and in the invention, when a unit of the display scale is not appropriate as stated above, and when plural pieces of JOB information exist on the same position, those pieces of information are displayed to be superimposed, and when JOB whose state is different from ordinary state is in existence, a user can recognize existence of the JOB without requiring operations such as scale changes, by displaying the JOB on the uppermost layer, and an improvement of operability can be aimed, by making selection operations concerning the aforesaid JOB to be possible by request.